Donald Trump has taken office “with a bright, clear mandate to make wholesale changes to every aspect of the federal government,” declares Charles Hurt in The Washington Times. Indeed, his inauguration is the biggest “political revolution” to hit DC since Ronald Reagan — maybe even FDR. And “Trump’s mandate is as broad as it is dramatic,” with all aspects of government “on the table for complete overhauls.” Moreover, his mandate is nonpartisan: “He owes very little to the Republican Party and absolutely nothing to the Democratic Party.” Nor is he beholden to any special interests, save “the voters who elected him.” This leaves him “poised to reinvent the entire federal government in favor of the American people alone.”

Historian: In Some Ways, Trump Is Like Ike

The comparisons between President Trump and Dwight Eisenhower “are irresistible,” despite their obvious contrasts, says Ike biographer (and Fox News anchor) Brett Baier in The Weekly Standard. Eisenhower was “the first nonpolitician to be elected president since Ulysses Grant” — Trump, the first since then. Like Ike, Trump named “a cabinet of doers, not operatives.” Eisenhower also made it a top priority to “establish a working relationship” with Moscow. And Trump’s headline phone call with Taiwan’s president recalls Eisenhower’s post-election trip to Korea during the war. President Harry Truman “was outraged that a president-elect would step into foreign policy in such a direct way.” But “the public was behind Ike, and, more important, the North Koreans and their Chinese allies took him seriously.”

Analysts: Is Russia Having Buyer’s Remorse?

Russian TV has been giving Trump “the kind of fawning coverage usually reserved for Vladimir Putin,” note Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov and Irina Reznik at Bloomberg. But “inside the Kremlin, the initial euphoria over having a Putin admirer in the White House is giving way to skepticism that any meaningful detente with the US can be achieved.” For one thing, controversy over reported Russian hacking “forced many of Trump’s cabinet picks to take tougher lines” on Moscow “than the Kremlin anticipated.” And “those differences, coupled with Trump’s unpredictability, are starting to worry the Kremlin.” Indeed, the whole uproar has only “energized Putin’s critics.”
Scholar: Feminists Should Accept Melania Trump

In becoming the only first lady in 200 years not to move into the White House on Inauguration Day, observes Lauren Wright in The Washington Post, Melania Trump will deny her husband “certain advantages,” such as “feel-good media coverage.” Yet she doesn’t seem to care, and “that is actually a step forward for presidential wives.” Although unpaid advisers, “first ladies have made more public remarks than vice presidents across the past three administrations,” mostly in campaign settings. But while Melania Trump “represented a sharp divergence from this model” during the election, “prominent feminists have lambasted her.” However, “her apparent refusal to adhere to a path first ladies have followed for decades . . . may lessen the burden placed on future presidential spouses.”
Numbers-cruncher: Trump Doesn’t Need Economists

Economists “are aghast” that Trump has hired so few of them for the White House, but Diana Furchtgott-Roth at US News World Report suggests perhaps the new president understands why “economics is known as the dismal science.” After all, she notes, it’s not as if economists did “such a great job” advising President Barack Obama. Besides, “Trump’s platform for increasing economic growth is to lower individual and corporate tax rates and reduce regulation. These are standard solutions to problems of lack of growth. Trump does not need economists to tell him this. It is obvious.” His economic team consists of people who “have been successful in their own fields — far more successful than the average economist.”